Something specific: Frank taking him to the zoo when he was little.
Something else: Nonna praying in church for everyone’s soul.
He runs into trouble when he thinks about any of the others: Glory, Roadie, Baby Pauly.
Moonie drives toward All Saints, arm resting out the window. “Anyone up for ice cream later? Hard to believe how warm it is for April.”
It’s a mild night, warmer weather than they’ve had, a hint of rain in the air. There are already crickets chirping, as if warm summer were only a minute away, instead of months.
Ice cream is good. If Roadie orders for him, Anthony won’t have to get out of the car.
Frank rolls down the window. “I hate this shit.”
Moonie counters. “Nothing we can do, Frank.”
Anthony feels a twitching between his legs: Not good. Frank’s ideas are always dangerous. Everything might still be okay, though, if he can find something good to think about, something extra good. But first Frank needs to shut up.
“Turn off those damn machines,” Frank says.
Roadie clears his throat. “You can’t do that; he’ll die.”
Frank turns around in his seat.
Anthony can see the white parts of his father’s eyes shining in the dark, clearer since he started going to AA with Uncle Moonie. But the view makes Anthony’s small self grow a little bit bigger. He closes his eyes, imagines Frank hauling off and hitting his brother square in the face.
Not good.
Anthony’s social worker says it only works if there are more good thoughts than bad.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, did I?” Frank tells Roadie. “Anyway, he is dead.”
Sweat beads up on Anthony’s forehead. He tries not to picture Roadie disappearing into the nobody Frank thinks he is. He tries not to think about where they are going, All Saints, where bodies are naked and twisted under thin sheets. Anthony imagines his own naked body with nurses coming in and out to bathe him with a sponge. He cannot tell: good or bad?
Bad, he decides.
The other thing his social worker says is to think before speaking. She says, Try to remember that other people are human beings too. Just thinking the words human being helps him ignore the image of Frank’s fist popping into Roadie’s mouth.
Resigned, Frank faces forward again.
Moonie continues driving. Roadie continues breathing. They turn into the parking lot, a puzzling jumble of yellow lines, arrows pointing every which way.
Anthony tries not to think about Frank shutting down Baby Pauly’s machines.
“No use talking about it,” Frank says, but it’s too late.
The idea is out there now.
Anthony squeezes his eyes shut and thinks the best thought he knows, the one he keeps in reserve in case of an emergency: Sister Saint Cecilia.
Mary Margaret ushers Cee-Cee into her house.
“We’re home!”
Slamming the door behind them, Mary Margaret slows her pace to coo at a big fat happy baby who is sitting in a contraption on the kitchen table.
A wan woman in white slacks, Mary Margaret’s mother appears from the other room. She has a blonde pageboy with blue eye shadow caked up to her eyebrows, but somehow she seems deflated, a day-old balloon still recovering from this most recent baby.
“You must be Mary Margaret’s new friend?”
“Best friend,” Cee-Cee says.
Humming a lullaby, Mary Margaret’s mother sits to feed her baby a bottle while she admires a stack of clothes at her elbow.
“After num-nums, we’ll play dress up,” she says.
Mary Margaret frowns. “Hello, Tiger-Wiger. Were you a good boy today?”
“He doesn’t have an official name yet,” Mrs. Cortina tells Cee-Cee. “We’re waiting.”
“Superstitious,” Mary Margaret says.
The little house has dark wooden panels, a crucifix above the sink, and orange curtains everywhere.
“He’s such a good baby when he’s not screaming,” Mrs. Cortina says. “Aren’t you, Brother Boy?”
“Ignore her,” Mary Margaret says.
Once they are in the den, a small orange corner of a big open room across from the kitchen, Mary Margaret makes a beeline for the TV and turns on the local news.
Mrs. Cortina comes to the doorway, holding the baby out in the air. He is wearing a striped blue hat and overalls. “Turn that off, please; you have a guest. Besides, it’s depressing!”
Cee-Cee and Mary Margaret consider Mrs. Cortina with a single gaze.
“Look at Dumpling Wumpling.” She bounces the baby. “He’s a train conductor!”
Mary Margaret switches the station to a flash of glum teenagers exiting a church. Still to come, the voice-over announces, Orphans from Canada at Peace Rally! And the weather!
Mrs. Cortina comes back a few minutes later holding Tiger out like a toy. “Look! Now Pea-Pod’s a football player!”
Cee-Cee smiles at the tiny mesh jersey stuffed with baby chub, player number zero-zero. Satisfied, Mrs. Cortina leaves the room.
“Where does she get all those costumes?”
Mary Margaret shrugs. “She’s like that with a new baby until she gets sick of it.”
The local news gives way to national news. The somber theme song and Walter Cronkite get lost in the shuffle when Mrs. Cortina drifts back into the room carrying a plate of crackers and cheese. This time the baby is dressed as a sailor.
“Wash those filthy hands,” Mrs. Cortina tells Cee-Cee. “You’re covered in ink.”
When Cee-Cee returns from the bathroom, the news is blaring away with a clip of the president sweating it out in front of the cameras.
Mrs. Cortina gasps. “I hate the news!”
Then, with a cloud of unknowing, Mary Margaret’s mother ambles out of the room.
“She’s kind of weird,” Mary Margaret says.
“It’s okay,” Cee-Cee says. “The crackers are good.”
Mary Margaret stuffs her mouth with cheese. “Do you think you can find them, Cee-Cee?”
Cee-Cee adjusts her plaid jumper and Mary Margaret’s neckerchief.
“Them who?”
“Eileena Brice Iaccamo and her.” Mary Margaret points to the television screen as it displays a haunting colored stencil of a young woman with reddish cheeks and mousy hair. Underneath another girl’s name flashes. Missing person in California.
They stare at the bluish screen.
“There’s always another one,” Mary Margaret whispers.
Cee-Cee takes a sip of cola, thinking it over.
“I bet if you close your eyes,” Mary Margaret says, “you can find every girl who’s ever gone missing in the history of the world.”
The thought makes Cee-Cee tired.
Cooking dinner, Mrs. Cortina jokes around in a fake Irish accent. “I am Sister Holy Mackerel! Pleased to meet you!”
Mary Margaret cracks up, as her mother shakes Cee-Cee’s hand.
“So you’re the little holy terror everyone’s talking about, are you?” Sister Holy Mackerel asks. “Perform a miracle or it’s thirty lashes of the belt!”
Glory is never fun like this. Cee-Cee laughs and claps when Mary Margaret’s mother finishes clowning around.
She even takes a bow.
Cee-Cee shows them all her card tricks and Mrs. Cortina is best at guessing how Cee-Cee counts the piles and figures out which card is which.
“You could be a magician,” Cee-Cee says.
“You don’t even know how true that is!” Mrs. Cortina says, enjoying Cee-Cee’s compliment.
By the time Norbert arrives, doling out bear hugs, the casserole is ready.
“Tuna noodle with peas!” he whispers.
“I don’t know how you stand living at your grandmother’s, Cee-Cee,” Mrs. Cortina says. “It can’t be any fun.”
“Nonna’s okay. She’s just old.”
“Old world is more like it.” Mrs. Cortina bobs little Tiger on her knee, pattin
g him hard between the shoulders to get out a burp. His head wobbles as she holds him by the armpits. “Ladies and gentleman, I have an announcement: I am going out on ambulance crew tonight. So this party ends in half an hour.”
Mary Margaret pours a ketchup puddle.
Norbert makes a siren with his throat. “Emergency. Medical. Technician.”
“That’s right!” Mrs. Cortina smiles. “My crew provides medical services to people in need. We’re all trained volunteers.”
Mrs. Cortina isn’t nearly as pretty as Glory. She wears white shoes with big rubber Tootsie-roll soles. Her face is made up like a porcelain doll with eyebrows plucked into harsh, uneven lines. Cee-Cee can almost see each individual granule of powder on her face. She reminds her of the women at All Saints Rehabilitation Hospital.
“Are you a nurse?” Cee-Cee asks.
“Heck no,” she laughs. “I’m in it for the fires, the heart attacks and the drownings.”
Norbert pats Cee-Cee’s arm, looking slightly distressed. “Uh-oh.”
“Nothing personal, honey.” Mrs. Cortina takes her plate to the sink. “I just like helping out in an emergency. It really gets my heart pumping.”
She opens a black medical bag stuffed with equipment: several clear plastic respirators with blue tubing. Cee-Cee has seen equipment just like it in Baby Pauly’s room.
Mrs. Cortina smiles. “These help people breathe.”
“Like a little boy?” Cee-Cee asks.
Snapping the bag closed, she looks at Cee-Cee. “No, sweetheart, someone younger.”
“A baby!” Norbert says.
Mrs. Cortina tilts her head, smiling sadly. “Norbert, can you please tell me for the last time why that darn chicken crossed the road?”
Norbert busts into wild laughter.
Mary Margaret rolls her eyes. “Can’t we get another joke around here?”
“Norbert?”
Mouth full of noodles, he answers: “Because he didn’t have thumbs to hitchhike!”
Mrs. Cortina fills the room with high-pitched laughter, then starts firing out instructions: “Clean up these dishes, chocolate cake for dessert; I’ll drop Norbert home on my way to the ambulance.”
“You two, stay out of trouble!” Mrs. Cortina says. “Get to bed before your stepfather comes home from bowling. If he’s early, stay out of his way!”
Norbert keeps chewing and smiling.
“You know how he is, Mary Margaret.” Mrs. Cortina pulls a baby-blue knit vest over her white uniform. “No need to rile him up with people he can’t understand.”
“What about Tiger?”
Everyone turns and looks at the baby lying on his back, smearing spit onto his feet. “Just put him to bed and give him milk if he cries.”
Norbert stops chewing.
Mary Margaret watches her mother. “But what if…”
“Don’t be silly, Mary Margaret Josephine!” Mrs. Cortina gets her coat. “That bad business is behind us now.”
By 8:45, Mary Margaret and Cee-Cee zip two sleeping bags together on the floor and sit cross-legged on pillows, chewing gum.
“Let’s go out on the roof,” Cee-Cee says, looking out the window. “It’s so warm out.”
“Okay,” Mary Margaret says.
Cee-Cee gets up and cranks open the window. “The garage roof’s right there.”
Mary Margaret steps out first. “It’s getting chilly again.”
When they sit on the asphalt tiles, Cee-Cee throws an arm over her. “You can see everything from up here.”
Cee-Cee thinks about Baby Pauly, whose feet are turning in.
Mary Margaret thinks about Eileena Brice Iaccamo.
“Girls can go missing a long time and still be alive,” Mary Margaret says. “Do you think you can still find her?”
Cee-Cee thinks about filling Mary Margaret in about the Mirandas, but decides better of it. She has promised Nonna, Sister Amanda, and Brother Joe to keep quiet about them. Besides what would she say? She doesn’t know who they are or how they are related to Romeville’s missing girls. That everything’s connected is only a feeling.
“I don’t know.” Cee-Cee spits her gum up and out into the dark yard as far as she can.
Mary Margaret spits hers too but it lands in a plop a few inches from her bare feet, which makes them laugh. She lights up one of her mother’s cigarettes and smokes it halfway. “Let’s go back in.”
In their sleeping bags, Mary Margaret rolls on her back, not letting go of Cee-Cee’s hand.
“Missing girls give me a stomach ache.”
“Maybe that’s just what it feels like before a miracle,” Mary Margaret mutters, drifting off to sleep.
For a long time, Cee-Cee is restless. She hears Mary Margaret’s stepfather come home first, and then her mother. She hears the house go completely silent. She thinks about Mary Margaret’s baby brother down in the nursery. He smells sweet like powder and carrots and looks so peaceful when you put him in his crib. That’s the thing about babies; they are so impossible with their soft skulls. How does anyone ever grow up?
Down the hall, the very same thought ramps up Mrs. Cortina’s anxiety. She can’t bear that her baby boy might someday suffer at the whims of a cruel world. Cee-Cee tries to think about something else, but as soon as Mary Margaret starts to snore, she slips out of the sleeping bag and heads for Tiger’s nursery.
She stops in the doorway, watching at first.
In the orange glow of the giraffe nightlight, Mrs. Cortina stands over the crib. Cee-Cee can hear her mixed-up thoughts: I am the only one who loves him enough.
Cee-Cee steps forward and reaches for the plastic tube in her hand.
Mrs. Cortina tightens her grip. Her voice comes out slightly strangled: “Are you for real, Cee-Cee?”
She may not be able to help her own brother now, but Cee-Cee can save Tiger Cortina with a single lie. “I’ll get the angels to make sure he’s okay.”
Mrs. Cortina looks at Cee-Cee hard. “Do you double swear?”
“Triple swear,” Cee-Cee says. “On my grandmother’s life.”
Cee-Cee loosens Mrs. Cortina’s fingers and wedges out the tiny respirator, also removing the pillow from under her arm.
There may not be flaming angels or virgins singing this time, but Cee-Cee can still believe that something good has happened here, maybe something holy. At least Cee-Cee can pretend the way ordinary people do.
She will learn to pray and hope for the best just like everyone else.
As the Sisters say at school assembly: Each child is a child of God.
Abandoned, perhaps—but not without hope.
Across town the next morning, Nonna strips the sheets off all the beds in her house. She empties the garbage pails, and dusts her holy statues: St. Cecilia with her harp, St. Therese with her roses, and St. Faustina looking stern and slightly stunned by God’s mercy.
At five a.m., the sunlight is scant, and the town is still asleep.
Dressed for Mass, Nonna threads her way along the hallway, stopping to pick up lint off the carpet and wipe down the handrails.
She pauses outside Cee-Cee’s room and says a prayer.
Somewhere in the street a horn honks.
Nonna thinks of Cee-Cee sleeping under somebody else’s roof. She will need to get used to this view: Cee-Cee grown up and walking away.
They all go eventually, she thinks.
Nonna passes a famous portrait of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mother of My God, a phrase that has always brought great comfort. Nonna’s own life has been a tribute to motherhood and all the accompanying heartaches and mistakes. Children never turn out as you hope, but there are always surprises. Who could have imagined Nonna having someone to love so late in life in Cee-Cee?
Then, she stops what she is doing and feels something significant is happening. It happens the way she always hoped it would: a warm presence pressing at her back, the Jesus-of-her-mind arriving in glory.
Making her way through the house, she listens
to the voice: Lie down, woman, and find peace; I have chosen you.
Though her blouse and skirt are perfectly pressed, her shoes laced up and tied tight, Nonna lies down on her bed. She has already made up its smooth edges and hospital corners, but she stretches out on the covers just the same.
In the distance, another horn sounds, long and insistent.
It’s not for her any more; she closes her eyes.
When Cee-Cee gets home from Mary Margaret’s house, the shades are drawn in Nonna’s bedroom. The bureau is lined with old perfume bottles, spare rosaries, yellowing photographs of people now long dead. There’s a picture of Frank and Glory with a baby in their arms, Anthony. There are several of Nonna herself, looking resolute on her wedding day. Except for a shawl and some yarn, the rocking chair where she likes to crochet is empty. Cee-Cee rocks in it for a moment before getting up and going to the bed where Nonna lies fully dressed. It’s not quite noon.
“Why are you in bed?” Cee-Cee says. “Are you sick?”
She doesn’t stir.
“I’m home, Nonna.” Cee-Cee presses a hand on her grandmother’s cold arm. No motion, no warmth. “Aw, don’t be mad.”
Opening her eyes and looking at the ceiling for a moment, Nonna props herself up on an elbow and looks at Cee-Cee suspiciously.
Cee-Cee pulls out the yo-yo Mary Margaret gave her and shows Nonna her first trick: Walk the Dog. “Not bad, right?”
Nonna shrugs.
“It’s really no big deal to sleep over at someone else’s house,” Cee-Cee say. “Kids do it all the time.”
“She wants to kill the baby—la madre?” Nonna asks; sometimes she prays for Mrs. Cortina.
“Not anymore.”
“Miracolo?”
Cee-Cee shrugs. “It’s hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure that baby will get a name.”
“Promise me,” Nonna says, repeating the instructions she offers Cee-Cee at least once a month. “Something happens, you go. But only to the Mother General."
“I’m not going to become a nun, Nonna,” Cee-Cee says.
“Go. Promise.” Nonna thinks it over some more. “Only Amanda.”
“Let’s make lunch,” Cee-Cee says, palming her yo-yo. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Nonna frowns at Cee-Cee’s messy hair and points to a brush on the bureau. Cee-Cee gets it and sits at the edge of the bed so Nonna can undo her braids and remake them over neatly.
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